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Table of Contents
Title
Hedgehog Food Choice Experiment
Broad Question
Can a hedgehog detect different food smells?Specific Question
What food smell will a hedgehog be most attracted towards in a maze?Hypothesis
It is hypothesized that the hedgehog will go towards the catfood most. The hypothesis is based on the fact that the hedgehog is used to the catfood, as it is what he normally eats.Graph of Hypothesis
Variables
Independent Variable: Exit where different foods are placed
Dependent Variable: Kind of food
Variables That Need To Be Controlled: Hedgehog, maze, foods, amount of food, food container
Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation
Hedgehog - Any of several small insectivorous mammals of the family Erinaceidae of Europe, Africa, and Asia, having the back covered with dense erectile spines and characteristically rolling into a ball for protection.Maze - An intricate, usually confusing network of interconnecting pathways, as in a garden; a labyrinth.
General Plan
The goal of this experiment is to see which food the hedgehog will go towards through the maze. A hedgehog will go through a maze with three exits with a different food at each exit. The experiment measures which food he goes towards over the course of 21 trials. Each different food will be put at a different exit each trial. Cat food, sliced apples, and cooked ground beef will be used. One ounce of each food will be used. The hedgehog will not be allowed to eat the food at the end to the maze because the flavor of the food might sway his decision. There will be a line drawn two inches from the food when the hedgehog’s head crosses the line he will be picked up and whatever bite sized pieces and placed into a container that would be lidded with a hole covered top food is in front of the line will be recorded. All food will be chopped into small hedgehog to let the scent out into the air. All experiments will take place at the same time of day, around 5:00 pm, and in the same location.Potential Problems And Solutions
The hedgehog urinates and poops in the maze: clean it up as soon as possible. The hedgehog doesn't go towards any food and tries to escape the maze: close up the entrance to the maze. The hedgehog dies: shorten the number of trails in the experiment.Safety Or Environmental Concerns
The hedgehog may bite or you may get pricked, so have a band-aid on hand. Hold the hedgehog carefully so that he doesn't get dropped during transportation.Experimental Design
Resources and Budget Table
Data Table
Time Line
Background Research
Smell is a hedgehog's most important sense. They use smell to find food and they recognize things by their smell. Hedgehogs are always sniffing at the ground and their nose is always moving. They can smell their food under up to an inch of dirt. Small mammals such as rats, guinea pigs, hamsters and gerbils have been used in similar experiments. The scientific name of the African Pygmy Hedgehog is Atelerix albiventris algirus.References
__http://www.wildlife-web.org.uk/hedgehog/facts/senses.html____http://hedgehogcentral.com/info.shtml#whatfeed__
__http://www.ratbehavior.org/RatsAndMazes.htm#ClassicMaze__
__http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB3RhkjYJqw__
__http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ftqC5V1V5k__
__http://www.ehow.com/info_12110215_science-project-experiments-kids-sense-smell-animals.html__
__http://www.udel.edu/GK-12/Material/2007/CM/Nazdrowicz/Activities/Animal%20Signs08.pdf__
__http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/comemeetmyfamily/hhcare4A.html__
Detailed Procedure
1. Create this webpage2. Obtain hedgehog
3. Purchase food: ground beef, apples and cat food (any kind of cat food or a mixture)
4. Build maze with one entrance and three exits out of cardboard and/or wood. If you want to, spray paint the maze
5. Cook up 1 ounce of beef in a pan on the stove, slice up 1 ounce of apples, and measure out 1 ounce of cat food. Cut up apples into pieces the same size as the bits of ground beef and cat food. Put each different type of food into a similar dish. Put lids over dishes so that hedgehog cannot eat food
6. Put one dish at each exit
7. Make a line two inches out from the food dish. If the hedgehog’s head crosses the line, he has gone to that food
8. Put hedgehog at entrance to maze. Get paper and writing utensil and record food the hedgehog goes towards. Record time (in seconds) it takes hedgehog to get to a food (from putting him down to picking him up)
9. Do this over again until you have done 21 trials, recording the data every time. Move the foods to a different exit every trial as according to setup in Data Table above
Photo List
The Maze
The Maze Entrance
Drawing the Red Lines
Weighing the Food
The Ground Beef
The Hedgehog in the Maze
Releasing the Hedgehog Into the Maze
Hedgehog Crossing the Red Line
Results
The hedgehog went towards the catfood more than it went towards the cooked ground beef or sliced apples. He went to the catfood nine times out of 21 trials and went to cooked ground beef six times and the apples six times. The mean of the catfood was 43% and the apples and ground beef were both 28.5%. The hedgehog did not go towards one specific exit more than the others.All Raw Data
Raw Data TableGraphs
Photos
Videos
Data Analysis
Conclusion
This experiment was designed to see which food smell a hedgehog would be most attracted towards in a maze. The independent variable was which exit of the maze the food was at, and the dependent variable was the food the hedgehog went towards. Out of three foods, cooked ground beef, sliced apples, and catfood, the hedgehog went toward the catfood more often. It went to the catfood 43% of the time, and the cooked ground beef and sliced apples 28.5% of the time each. In terms of trials, the hedgehog went to the catfood nine times out of 21 trials, and the cooked ground beef and sliced apples six times each.
Discussion
The question for this experiment was: What food smell would a hedgehog be most attracted to in a maze? The question was answered. The three choices of food were cat food, sliced apples, and cooked ground beef. The hedgehog seemed to prefer the smell of the catfood, as was hypothesized, since it was the food the hedgehog normally ate. He went to the catfood nine times out of 21 trials, and went to the sliced apples and cooked ground beef six times each. The hedgehog did not go to one exit more than any of the others: he did not just go to one exit the first trial, and then just keep going to that exit. There were no particular patterns in the data.
The hedgehog would try to escape the maze a lot, which could make trials drag on and on for a long time. If it got agitated, it would poop and urinate in the maze and it would have to be cleaned up, but between trials. The longest time it was in the maze was for 150 seconds, and it finally went towards ground beef. The quickest time it was in the maze was for five seconds, which it did twice, and it went to ground beef and then to catfood. It was predicted that it would go towards catfood the most, since it was familiar to it, and it did as was predicted.
Benefit to Community and/or Science
The information that was learned from this experiment could benefit hedgehog owners because they would know that even though hedgehog can eat all sorts of things, they prefer the catfood that they are supposed to eat in captivity to any other kind of treat. Owners can save time and money by knowing this, because rather than going out and buying extra treats for their hedgehog, they can just stick to the catfood.Abstract
This experiment was designed to see which food smell a hedgehog would be most attracted towards in a maze. The independent variable was which exit of the maze the food was at, and the dependent variable was the food the hedgehog went towards. Out of three foods the hedgehog went toward the catfood more often. It went to the catfood 43% of the time. In terms of trials, the hedgehog went to the catfood nine times out of 21 trials.